win8.1: safe mode not booting

[Soukyuu]

Restarting into safe mode lands me in a black screen. I can see my keyboard light go on and out in 2 second interval. If I move my mouse, the "safe mode"-watermarked screen is shown, as well as a mouse cursor. After 2 seconds, the screen turns black again and the mouse cursor is reset to the center of the screen, then I have 2 seconds to move the mouse cursor again.

I don't have aeroglass nor startisback+ installed, uninstalling my antivirus (avast) didn't help either. If it matters, this installation was done by applying the install.wim with imagex.exe

Any idea how to fix that?

[Tripredacus]

Well, for one, Imagex doesn't support Windows 8 or 8.1. You would have seen errors during deployment. You would need to use DISM.

But what you describe makes me think it is a video issue. Do you have a different monitor you could try?

[Soukyuu]

I tried applying win8.x with DISM before, but it couldn't recognize half of the hardware in the target pc, as if drivers were missing. There were no errors/warnings deploying win8.x with imagex and all hardware was detected properly. Attempting to deploy server2012 r2 with imagex did show that some boot files are missing, though.

I doubt it's a video issue seeing how usb hardware seems to be stuck in an initialization loop, but I'll test with another monitor and report back.

To clarify, the "safe mode" watermark only appears once, then only a black screen and the mouse pointer are visible.

edit: other monitor shows the same behavior. It's never actually losing signal though.

Edited January 29, 2014 by Soukyuu

[Soukyuu]

I saw DrStrange having the same issue as me here, but unlike him, I haven't messed around with permissions. Any other ideas what it might be?

[Soukyuu]

Welp, out of 3 PCs in our household, only mine refuses to boot into safe mode, even though all three of them were installed the same way.

I guess I will have to just reformat it, as it's also showing some really weird behavior.